


Promises

by halfheartedheroine



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: (also kind of), (kind of), Accidentally Acquired Infant, Childbirth, M/M, Mild Gore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-13
Packaged: 2018-07-20 00:02:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7382908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfheartedheroine/pseuds/halfheartedheroine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chapter two: "Cecil looked at Carlos as though he was heavily concussed, his head tilted as he fought to properly arrange the facts in his mind."</p><p>Carlos accidentally acquires a baby. Cecil has some concerns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place roughly after season three (specifically episode 70B: Review) and is not compliant with season four (or the book). Spoilers may or may not occur. Beware.
> 
> (aka Carlos has returned to Night Vale)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Technically, he wasn’t breaking any of the rules, Carlos reasoned with himself as he climbed down the fire escape ladder."

The Dog Park still called to him sometimes.

Carlos had never mentioned this fact to Cecil, and he was especially reluctant to bring it up after his return to Night Vale. He’d been on his best behavior since his return, sticking to a precise schedule in the lab and always calling when he expected to be late returning home. Cecil was looking for some reliability—that wasn’t so hard to do, was it? His fellow scientists gone, long grown tired of the eccentricities of Night Vale, Carlos worked alone in the lab, wondering if his colleagues would ever return from their sabbaticals. Sometimes late at night, when his desk lamp was the only source of light in the lab, he wondered if he’d made a mistake by staying in the Desert Otherworld for so long. Other times, it was when Cecil described activities he’d started while alone, like bowling—those times also instilled a sense of shame into him.

He wasn’t alone in chastising himself over his extended sabbatical. Cecil’s friend—ex-boyfriend? he sometimes wondered—Earl, had finally advanced from simply jealous glares to a proper conversation. It wasn’t entirely coincidence that it occurred at the very moment Cecil left to attend to the grill, leaving the two alone in the kitchen. The light, easy conversation about soccer followed Cecil out of the house, leaving Carlos and Earl with vividly uncomfortable silence.

“If you’re planning on leaving again, you should just end things with him. He doesn’t deserve to dangle on your hook,” Earl said, his voice low as the two of them prepared dessert.

Carlos met his gaze, the knife he was using to cut strawberries going still on the chopping board. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, his voice quiet. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Earl’s eyes bore into him. For a moment, Carlos wondered if he was trying to read his mind. “You’d better not be. Cecil might say he can do a long-distance relationship, but it’s not good for him for that long.”

“I really don’t think that our relationship is any of your business,” Carlos said.

“It is when he confides in me about it,” Earl returned, his voice low.

Carlos opened his mouth to tell Earl that he shouldn’t interfere, but the screen door banged shut as Cecil returned with the kebabs and invisible corn. “Dinner’s done!” he said cheerily, his eyes flicking between Carlos and Earl for a moment. “You two weren’t squabbling over who’s going to win the tournament, were you?”

Carlos felt at a loss about how to change the subject again. Earl picked up Cecil’s thread with a lighthearted “It’s going to be the Tiffin Tourniquets, of course,” eliciting a laugh from Cecil before he turned back to the dining room table. Carlos crossly chopped the last few strawberries before dumping them into the bowl, Earl’s words stinging his mind.

Earl’s words still stung even weeks later. But Carlos knew he had a point—Cecil seemed pleased by knowing when Carlos was coming home again. And staying near Night Vale wasn’t a huge compromise, was it? Carlos could find plenty of things to study around town. He’d spent an enjoyable afternoon rolling around in a severe puppy infestation, absolutely delighted. He’d tried to interview the glow cloud but it was too busy getting its child out of the school pickup line. And he’d spent a few afternoons at City Hall, trying to study the runes and prophecies until he started dreaming in strange symbols—he’d decided that that was enough of that.

He had really only made a few promises: don’t leave the city without mentioning it, don’t interact with the hooded figures, don’t go to the Dog Park. And Carlos could manage that.

Technically, he wasn’t breaking any of the rules, Carlos reasoned with himself as he climbed down the fire escape ladder. He’d been watching City Hall for a few days now, immediately after seeing a group of mute children leave. How did they get to City Hall? Do they live there? Who takes care of them? Carlos had pondered this for a while, and he hadn’t gathered any more data until yesterday—a pair of mute adults had gone into City Hall. Carlos wasn’t entirely sure if they were connected to the mute children, but his instinct told him that they were. Although instinct would be hard to classify as proper data, he mused to himself as he eased the storm window open and carefully dropped into the basement of City Hall.

He had almost expected the basement to be dusty and filled to the ceiling with storage boxes, but it looked more like a lab. The tiled floor had had some water damage at some point, Carlos mused as they crackled under his feet. Rows of faintly beeping machines, three feet wide and coming up to the middle of Carlos’ chest, stood in front of yards and yards of plastic tubing, carefully taped down onto the floor to avoid a trip hazard. Each one was topped with an opaque plastic dome, roughly the size of a basketball. Carlos reached out to touch one. It was surprisingly pliant under his hand and oddly warm in the cool basement air.

Leaving the pods alone, Carlos went over to a desk that was covered in binders. Mindful of footsteps upstairs, he started to sift through the papers, uncertain what all the numbers and charts were describing. Each section—labeled with a different ID number—contained charts that showed increasing data, roughly the same amongst each ID. Frowning, Carlos snapped a picture of each page of one ID, hoping that a pattern would emerge from the numbers after he pondered it back in the lab.

His watch chirped—he couldn’t remember what it was for, but it chirped daily—and he set down the files. One of the pods closest to him gave a faint shudder, the liquid inside sloshing as a lump pressed itself to the surface. Both intrigued and mildly alarmed, Carlos rested his palm over the bump. It recoiled for a moment before returning to nudge Carlos’ hand. He patted it gently, before prodding the other side. “Was that a spine?” he murmured, newly alarmed. Hopefully he hadn’t just poked and prodded some new robotic life-form which would be horribly offended by his actions. It was Night Vale, you never really knew.

He returned to the binders and started copying down a set of dates into his pad of paper. Some of the dates at the bottom of the page were smudged, and Carlos held the binder up closer to his face to read it. A nearby door slammed, making Carlos flinch and knock the corner of the binder into the formerly moving pod. He felt a light spray of liquid against his hand.

A cold thrill rushed through him. “No, no, no,” he said under his breath, setting the binder down and leaning in to examine the damage. The binder had knocked into a seam of the flexible plastic, tearing it, and the pod was now leaking. He pressed his palm against the damaged seam and glanced around for something he could use to seal it. “This was a bad idea, a very bad idea,” he said to himself, stretching over to grab a roll of packing tape. No dice. The wet tape fell away against his palms.

A shrill alarm started beeping from the base of the machine and Carlos looked up, dreading the footsteps that would mean he was caught. That small bump nudged against his palm again—once, twice—before nudging against the seam and splitting it further. Another gush of clear liquid flowed down Carlos’ hands, but he was too mesmerized to take note of that. The bump was now free and was definitely a tiny human foot.

The seam of the pod was failing, and after taking a second to consider how quickly the pod was deflating, Carlos reached into the pod and carefully felt inside. Legs, stomach, cord, head—presumably human baby, if not full-term then awfully close. Its hands flailed before clutching one of Carlos’ hands. With his free hand he cradled the infant’s back and head, and with a silent prayer that he was doing the right thing, gently, he pulled it free from the failing pod, the umbilical cord slithering free after it.

The infant—a girl—looked ashen, almost bloodless, and her mouth opened as if to cry, but no sound emerged. Carlos carefully settled her onto the top of the artificial womb to assess her. Her hands were balled up into fists, and they were warming to a dark brown, despite the blue tinge of her face. The girl kicked, her slick fists thumping against the bed of the pod.

“Come on, please cry, please—“ Carlos pleaded.

She looked distressed, her face screwing up with the effort of her silent cry. Instinctively, Carlos reached forward and scooped up the baby, cradling her against his chest. He rubbed her back vigorously, her tiny head tucked beneath his chin. He felt sick. He hadn’t meant for this to happen, he’d only meant to discover more about how Night Vale worked and where the strange, mute children came from—what was he supposed to do? Smacking a baby on the feet or bottom was just a cliché, right? Some absurd fact floated into his brain—blowing gently on a newborn’s face was supposed to awaken their instinct to breathe, right? Or was that just for first aid in case they were drowning—he should run for help, throw himself on the mercy of whatever beings worked upstairs—

Against his collarbone, she took in a gasp and wailed piteously.

Carlos let out a relieved laugh and pressed a kiss to the top of her head.

A new alarm started beeping at the base of the pod—OXYGEN LEVELS LOW—and Carlos looked down at the cloudy gel starting to sink into his shoes. “Oh no, this is definitely not good,” he murmured, bouncing up and down to soothe the baby. The wet cord connecting her to the pod went taut, and Carlos gently set her down again. He reached into his lab coat to retrieve two rubber bands and a pocketknife to cut the cord properly, then scooped the baby back up.

A third alarm started ringing shrilly; the competing noises making his ears ring. The baby let out a loud wail from the distressing noises. The surrounding pods shuddered in response and Carlos could see the tiny bumps of feet and hands and heads pressing against dozens of pods. Carefully, he unbuttoned his lab coat to cradle her close. He covered one of her ears with his hands, and almost reflexively, he pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “Let’s get out of here,” he murmured, needing to see sunlight and clear his mind.

He just needed a second to think, Carlos insisted to himself as he climbed up the fire escape. “Just get away from the noise and get somewhere familiar, and then think about how to fix this,” he murmured in the front seat of his car. A stolen newborn clutched to his chest, Carlos turned the car on and started driving back to the lab.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Cecil looked at Carlos as though he was heavily concussed, his head tilted as he fought to properly arrange the facts in his mind."

            “You’ve reached the voicemail box of Cecil Palmer. I’m probably at work, or maybe I’m off exploring the Sand Wastes with Carlos—either way, please leave me a message.”

            “Ceec? Hi honey—I did something bad and I panicked and I need help, like, really soon, okay? Can you bring a first aid kit to the lab? One with rubbing alcohol and maybe some sutures. Knock loud so I can hear you—I have to go—“

 

            Cecil’s car screeched into the lab’s parking lot, and Cecil had hardly turned the car off before clutching the first aid kit to his chest and running. He pounded on the main door, looking behind him as a group of Secret Police officers rode past on their scooters, lights blazing. Mercifully, they left him alone. “Carlos?” Cecil called, pounding on the door. “Carlos, please don’t make me use my key—it’s going to take years to find it in my bag—“

            Carlos opened the door a crack, squinting in the bright daytime sun. “Ceec, honey, shhh, don’t be too loud,” he said, holding a finger to his lips as he leaned outside.

            Cecil, however, was not listening. He was, in fact, staring intently at a small patch of blood on the front of Carlos’ t-shirt, right where his ribs met. He had a dizzying sense of déjà vu, the image of the Apache Tracker dragging Carlos’ motionless body up from beneath the bowling alley. “It’s okay, I’ll fix it—how deep is it, and how many runestones am I going to need to seal the wound?” he said, pushing Carlos back into the lab against the entryway wall. He set the first aid kit down and tugged the bloodied shirt up to expose Carlos’ belly.

            “What? No, no, it’s not mine—I’m fine!” Carlos said, trying not to giggle as Cecil’s fingers probed his stomach for a wound that was non-existent. Finding nothing but soft skin and a few waxy scars, Cecil stopped, his panicked expression changing to confused, then furious.

            “You’re covered in blood and demand that I bring you a first aid kit, and then you /laugh/ at me for thinking you’re hurt?” Cecil said, shoving Carlos. He jolted back against the shelves of journals, rattling them. “After everything that’s happened, you didn’t think you should clarify things with a simple ‘oh, by the way, honey, I’m completely fine’? The whole town is absolutely teeming with Secret Police!”

            Carlos rubbed his shoulder, grimacing. “I’m sorry—you know I’m ticklish. I’m sorry. I’m fine, Cecil, I promise.” He slipped his fingers under his t-shirt to check that he wasn’t bleeding from the shelf’s sharp corner.

            Cecil huffed, his nostrils flared as he did his calm breathing technique. He crossed his arms and turned away from Carlos for a few moments, focusing on the periodic table mounted on the wall. After the initial burst of adrenaline had faded, he sighed and met his eyes again. “I’m still upset. But we can talk about that later. Why did you need the first aid kit?” he asked.

            “Oh! Right—right, so, you know how I’ve been exploring Night Vale recently? Well, I did something stupid,” Carlos said bluntly, taking Cecil’s hand and leading him into the lab, where all the lights were turned off. The thick canvas shades over the windows filtered the sunlight into a soft aquamarine, a stark change from the blinding light in the entryway. The chalkboard only had one “science” written on it, a calligraphy heart carefully drawn around it. Several beakers, now empty, lined the shelves. Carlos guided Cecil towards his desk, in the far corner of the lab. “I think I found where they grow the mute children—it’s in the basement of City Hall—and I damaged one of the children’s pods. Then a bunch of alarms went off and everything was happening so fast, and I panicked and ran.”

            “Understandable…” Cecil said warily. “You don’t want to mess with the mute children—just ask Earl. Probably a good idea to pretend you never found them.”

            Carlos chuckled nervously before bringing Cecil in front of a small nest of towels, carefully placed in his desk chair. “About that…’ he said hesitantly, feeling Cecil’s hand tighten in his. The newborn, happily swaddled in Carlos’ softest sweatshirt, let out a tiny squeaking yawn, her eyes barely open.

            Cecil stared, pulling Carlos by the hand to shield him with his gangly arms. “Carlos, stand behind me, alright? It may look docile, but we don’t know how strong it may be,” he said, his voice steady and calm, and he took out his cell phone. “I’ll call the Secret Police—they must be looking for it.”

            “No! I mean, shh, no,” Carlos said, correcting his volume when the baby startled, her tiny hands splaying for a moment before clenching again. He reached out to push Cecil’s phone down. “Don’t call them. I told you to bring the first aid kit because her cord stump is still bleeding and we need to clean it. That’s where the blood is coming from—she’s okay, it’s just worrying me and I’d feel a lot better if we use proper medical supplies instead of some rubber bands I found in my coat pockets.”

            Cecil looked at Carlos as though he was heavily concussed, his head tilted as he fought to properly arrange the facts in his mind. “You stole a mute child. And instead of returning it to the Secret Police—who should actually be taking care of it—you want us to give it medical attention?” he said warily.

            Carlos nodded, crouching down to pick up the baby. “Her. Not it. Well, I think it’s a her—I don’t know what she feels she identifies as—“ he said, peering down at the newborn as she yawned again.

Cecil made an aborted screech in the back of his throat as Carlos picked up the newborn. “Honey, no, it might be venomous! Put it down!”

Scoffing, Carlos rubbed her back as she nuzzled into the hollow of his neck, and he rested his cheek on top of her head, her peach fuzz tickling his chin. “She’s not venomous—or poisonous. Or if she is, I’m definitely already contaminated. And it stops her from crying.”

            Cecil gently grabbed him by the shoulders, careful to not touch the bundle in Carlos’ arms. “Carlos. We have to give it back. It doesn’t belong to you.”

            “I know, I know,” Carlos murmured, not meeting his eyes. “Help me with the first aid kit first? Please?”

            Cecil sighed loudly and retrieved the kit. He insisted on wearing the nitrile gloves in the kit and pushed Carlos to wear them. Carlos held the baby still on the lab bench while Cecil cleaned up her navel and retied the tie, careful to not dislodge the pinned towel as a makeshift diaper. She squirmed away from the rubbing alcohol and cried as it cooled on her skin, her tiny fists clenched around Carlos’ fingers. Once her navel was cleaned and bandaged, Carlos held her close to his chest again. “There, there, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” he soothed, but her loud cries seemed to relay that this experience was the worst one in her short life. “You’re okay, I’ve got you.” He felt guilty—he’d literally taken this baby out of a temperature-controlled, soft, quiet pod and she probably was terrified. She nuzzled into Carlos’ neck and continued to fuss.

            Cecil quietly tucked away the unused supplies into the kit and perched on one of the tall lab chairs. “Carlos. Babe. We can’t just barricade ourselves in the lab for forever. The food supplies are already pretty low after Street Cleaning Day. What do we do now?” he asked, trying to keep his voice quiet as he watched his boyfriend soothe a potentially dangerous creature in his arms.

            Carlos hummed—first in contemplation, then after realizing that the baby seemed to enjoy it. “Well, we should probably get some more food—what do babies here eat? Do we have to buy actual formula? Also diapers. Probably a proper outfit too, unless she wants to permanently wear a sweatshirt from the University of—“

            “Carlos. Listen—those are long-term goals,” Cecil said gently. “We have to give it back. We’re not equipped to raise one of the mute children—I don’t even know if parenting books cover that sort of supernatural being.”

            Carlos frowned. “I know we’re not. I feel terrible—I’m sorry that I stole her but I need to know that she’ll be okay if we give her back.” He felt a terrible dread at the idea of returning to City Hall, with the unsteady, scuttling footsteps in the walls and ceilings. He wasn’t sure he would be able to stand abandoning a helpless newborn there.

            Cecil shrugged slightly. “I don’t know if they’ll tell you what’s going to happen to her,” he said gently. “But they’re going to know what kind of food she needs, and which bloodstone rituals they need to do for her development, and all sorts of other things. We’ve got to bring it back to City Hall. It’s for the best.”

            He stroked the peach fuzz atop the baby’s head. “I know it is,” Carlos said quietly. “I just feel bad about—well, all of this. Kidnapping her and dragging her all over town. I just wanted to learn more about the town. I didn’t mean to—well, I knew I was going to get in a little bit of trouble, but I didn’t mean to cause any actual damage,” he explained, patting the baby’s back.

            Cecil nodded, very slowly and carefully placing his hand over Carlos’, mindful of how close he was to the baby. “I know you didn’t, honey. It’s going to be alright.”

            Carlos nodded. “It’s going to be alright,” he repeated, before quietly adding, “Alright. Let’s go.”


End file.
